Job Discussion Forums

[Black_Beer_Man]

It doesn't look good to me.
I look around and see shabby buildings and bridges.
Japan's GDP is the same as its interest payments on its national debt.
Fewer babies being born means each tax payer is going to have to pay more to keep the social services working.
China is poised to crush Japan in terms of engineering and electronics production. What will Japan have, cars and robots?

Your thoughts?

[mitsui]

It is kind of bleak.
Unless there are enough immigrants, I don't see the economy improving.

It seems that in general, people are trying to save money and cut costs.

[rxk22]

[kzjohn]

I think it's commendable that with a slowly shrinking workforce that Japan has been able to mark time, or even do a little better than that for its GDP numbers. (Tho some of that is due to robotics/AI, and there have been some suggestions that robots should be taxed.)

Showing good growth numbers is relatively easy when you have a young population and an expanding workforce. Harder when that's not the case.

But if you think that Japan has been dealt a poor demographic hand, look at the next two countries/economies to the west of here. Tho not as close as Japan's challenge, both face a larger demographic challenge than Japan does.

And, neither has achieved (nor will they have achieved) the level of development that Japan has when the same process unfolds there. The smaller of those two countries has a lower birthrate than does Japan, and the larger one, tho higher than Japan, is still not at replacement level.